That action-packed finish will, depending on your taste, strike you as a preposterous gloss on, or a welcome relief from, the quiet detective story of the first 90 minutes. I thought it was both. Berg and screenwriter Matthew Carnahan bring a certain veneer of authenticity to the proceedings. Garner’s character learns about a woman’s place in Saudi culture. The wise Saudi policeman in charge of aiding the FBI men, and even some of the other Saudis, are depicted with more subtlety that you might expect. But still, the basic premise, that four spunky Americans with guns and a copy of The Koran for Dummies will be able to save the day, is never in question.
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Kingdom (**3/4)
Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman play a team of FBI agents who travel to Riyadh to investigate a series of bomb blasts that have killed hundreds in an American-controlled zone in the Saudi capital. The opening credits play over a series of chronological film and sound clips that telescope the history of American economic and political interests in the country, which of course are almost solely tied to the presence of oil in the region. But this montage promises more than what the movie delivers, which is an earnest but sometimes-sterile tale that celebrates the derring-do of the FBI, climaxes with a rock-’em sock-’em shootout, and ends with an ironic reminder that shootouts may solve a crime but not resolve the hatred that led to it. Director Peter Berg brings the same earnestness and sense of realism that he did to his previous effort, Friday Night Lights. However, it suffers from the same flaw, a dry approach that makes the characters fairly forgettable, even if the performances are entirely creditable. (Bateman shows the most personality.) Given the tragedy its center, I felt like I should have felt a greater emotional investment in the story.
That action-packed finish will, depending on your taste, strike you as a preposterous gloss on, or a welcome relief from, the quiet detective story of the first 90 minutes. I thought it was both. Berg and screenwriter Matthew Carnahan bring a certain veneer of authenticity to the proceedings. Garner’s character learns about a woman’s place in Saudi culture. The wise Saudi policeman in charge of aiding the FBI men, and even some of the other Saudis, are depicted with more subtlety that you might expect. But still, the basic premise, that four spunky Americans with guns and a copy of The Koran for Dummies will be able to save the day, is never in question.
That action-packed finish will, depending on your taste, strike you as a preposterous gloss on, or a welcome relief from, the quiet detective story of the first 90 minutes. I thought it was both. Berg and screenwriter Matthew Carnahan bring a certain veneer of authenticity to the proceedings. Garner’s character learns about a woman’s place in Saudi culture. The wise Saudi policeman in charge of aiding the FBI men, and even some of the other Saudis, are depicted with more subtlety that you might expect. But still, the basic premise, that four spunky Americans with guns and a copy of The Koran for Dummies will be able to save the day, is never in question.
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